This Old Verse: Ted Kooser's Poetry Manual

After reading The Poetry Home Repair Manual by poet laureate emeritus Ted Kooser.

When I've seen an episode of "This Old House" on TV, the wood shapes as easily as butter under the adzes and saws of the craftsmen, and the remodeled porch is complete in thirty minutes. Then I try for an hour to hang a mirror, and make a mess.

In the same way, easygoing Ted Kooser makes writing poetry seem simple, just a matter of developing an initial idea and making some choices along the way, using the tools available -- the title, the first impression, the sounds, the senses, the form on the page, the metaphors and similes.

Kooser's examples come mostly from poets working today. He uses some of his own poems, and shows us failed drafts, too. Almost every example earned my seal of approval, "Ah!" in the margin... often with a "Ha!" too. Kooser's own story, beating the sun up to write at his farm each morning before his commute to the insurance office in town, is as inspirational as the text.

But, as with "This Old House," when I tried to complete the one poem I've had in mind for a few years, I bogged down.

This doesn't take away from his book's value. Kooser gently but firmly decries the critics and professors whose self-worth is based on perpetuating the perception that "baffling" poems are better than ones that are "accessible" at first reading. (He chooses examples that are accessible at first reading, that also reward repeated readings.) He preaches and demonstrates how poems "freshen the world," as he illustrates early in the book with this poem, "Fire Burning in a Fifty-Five Gallon Drum" by Jared Carter:

Next time you'll notice them on your way to work
or when you drive by that place near the river where the stockyards used to stand, where everything

is gone now. They'll be leaning over the edge
of the barrel, getting it started. . .

Kooser takes that first line to describe all good poems: "Once we have read and been affected by a poem, our awareness of its subject -- in this instance a group of men huddled around a barrel -- may be forever heightened and made memorable (p. 7)."

Near the end of the book, Kooser enlarges this idea still more to hint at a metaphysical or even religious function for poems. He admits that, if he lives another twenty years, he may even come to believe in a God who cares about what he does. Until then, though, he feels more and more certain that all things are connected, and poems -- especially through metaphor -- help us to see that.

He assures us that we won't make a living writing poems. At the end, though, he points out that we work on a poem hoping that this one will be memorable and touching and insightful; and out there are readers hoping to find just such a poem. Put it that way, the avocation of writing poems seems a hopeful one.

Guitarist / Composer / Lyricist David LaMotte

Thanks to friends Carol Fuller, John Fuller, and their colleague Zach, I attended a private concert in a backwoods venue behind a home north of Kennesaw, Georgia. We drove up a gravel lane, parked in grass, walked up past the mud and the railroad ties to a pot luck buffet, paid ten dollars to the host, and picnicked on the lawn where a long-haired guitarist sang in a little gazebo built for singers. Crickets, kids playing, and a frog were all part of the ambience.

The singer/songwriter was David LaMotte ( davidlamotte.com), fifteen years into his recording career, based in North Carolina but reaching worldwide into Europe and to a school named for him in Guatemala.

Early on, he sang an earnest and amusing song that played with a "conceit" in the old John Donne - 17th century style, taking a metaphor (my friend's brain is like a home) to a ridiculous extreme, yet taking it seriously:

Gonna crawl inside your soul
Gonna cook you up a little meal
You've been feeding yourself this garbage
Makes you feel the way you feel
I mean you got junk in your refrigerator
That's way, way overdue. . .

Another song describes a Friday night high school basketball team. With meaningful triple-rhyme (slant, but consistent) and economy of expression, LaMotte pictures the scene. . .

Do you see 23? That whole row is his relatives
His Mom looks sad, sitting over there next to his
Red faced Dad, trying to hold back the expletives

The grandfather "almost went pro" and the Dad had his own dreams, unrealized, "And it looks like the roots will take hold." La Motte plays by association, ""So it's root, root, root for the home team, / 'Cause if they don't win he'll be shamed. . . ."

Good as the lyrics were, and his witty patter, everyone with me was especially impressed by an instrumental number that he used to end his first set. Using his sound equipment's delay, he set up patterns of melody, chords, and rhythm (beating his guitar) that unfolded in canon over each other.

Long hair, casual clothes, Sixties persona -- but a serious musician and lyricist in the vein of Joni Mitchell, playing with different tunings and sounds, thick chords, and counterpoint. He's wise enough to know that not all poetry makes good lyrics, and not all good lyrics are poetry.

When W. Ruled the World

(Reflections on George W. Bush occasioned by an article, "The View from the Top" by Michael Gerson in Newsweek 8/21/2006 News and History )

For me and George W. Bush, it was disdain at first sight. Then he opened his mouth, and it was worse. During his debate with Al Gore, he did a clumsy job of expressing points that Reagan had made so elegantly and persuasively. He did say one thing I liked: That our "nation building" of late had been "arrogant." I didn't vote for him in 2000, but for the Libertarian candidate.

After 2001, it didn't get any better. Even when the media were approving his impromptu speech on the rubble of the twin towers and his strong speech before Congress, I was shuddering at the huge mistake of declaring a "war" on an abstraction, "terrorism," and the threat to go after nations that harbor terrorists. He was opening up a new cold war before our eyes.

Then, all of a sudden, Bush ruled the world. Saddam fell in about three weeks. Then the statue was pulled down, as Iraqis celebrated and said "Thank you, America." Within two weeks of that, as I recall, Libya's Khaddafi gave up nuclear weapons and became our pussy cat; North Korea's flakey dictator reopened talks; Egypt's autocratic "President" announced democratic reforms and new elections; Saudi Arabia's king announced a baby step towards giving some of his citizens a say in the choices of local officials; Israel made progress in negotiations with the Palestinians; Afghanistan's newly elected President seemed strong.

For that brief time, I had to admit that Bush's vision was possible, and he had deftly managed to make it happen, withstanding pressures and advice from people like me.

All this was brought to mind by Michael Gerson's short reflection on those days in the White House.

President Bush drew a fixed conclusion: as long as the Middle East remains a bitter and backward mess, America will not be secure. Dictators in that region survive by finding scapegoats for their failures -- feeding conspiracy theories about Americans and Jews, -- and use religious groups to destroy reformers and democrats. Oil money strengthens elites, buys rockets, funds research into weapons of mass destruction, builds radical schools across Africa and Asia and finds its way to terrorist organizations [that] exploit the humiliated and hopeless. . .

That things have gone wrong since then tells us about the management skills of the White House. But let's give credit where it's due to a President who had something we've lacked since Reagan and Thatcher: boldness of vision how things can be different, not just "managed."

Gerson finishes his article reminding us that "peace is not a natural state; it is achieved by a struggle of uncertain duration." He adds, "In that struggle, the cynical, the world-weary, the risk-averse will not inherit the earth."

Short Comment on War from Thoughtful Blogger

( News and History )

The author of the "Scientia est Potentia" web site (see links at side bar) wrote this on July 29:

Our War really isn't against terrorism. It's not a war against China, Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Syria, or Cuba and it has little to do with the "Axis of Evil". It's not a war against Kim Jong Il, Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, or even the would-be criminal who might live next door.

Our War is against ourselves. The War we face everyday is the struggle that is hidden behind the small choices that each of us make - the little things that slowly add up. Our War is about whether or not we'll defend the rights of those with whom we cannot seem to find common ground. It is about whether or not each day will find us having improved the community in which we live, or letting it slide. Will we improve ourselves, forcing our bodies and minds into that which is worthy of the opportunities that we have been given, or will we allow leisure and experience to soften us up for the inevitable end?

I asked my own seventh grade students to question the Pledge of Allegiance. Does "liberty and justice for all" apply to everyone, or just to people living in the US, or just to US citizens? They opted for the third choice. Then I asked, "Why were we in France and Germany and Italy and Japan during World War II?" They changed their minds. We mentioned Guantanamo Bay. They changed their minds again. From the perspective of (1) someone familiar with the great rhetoric of our nation's shapers from Thomas Jefferson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan and (2) a Christian, I'd say rights are innate and the US is the first society to recognize human rights as its cornerstone. Americans are privileged to live here, but rights are not our privilege alone.

Detective Novel "Skinwalker" Shifts Focus for Suspense

The plot of a murder mystery is scaffolding; the real fascination lies in the characters, the atmospherics, the dialogue, and, often, in what we may learn as we read. (See my earlier reflections on detective fiction.) Tony Hillerman's series featuring Navajo detective Joe Leaphorn is strong on what we learn about life on the Rez and on the tension between Navajo traditions and modern life. The novel SKINWALKER (a word meaning "witch") from 1986, earliest book in the series that I've read, introduces Leaphorn to a more traditional-minded detective named Jim Chee. Their complementary characters are interesting.

More interesting for me is the rhythm that Hillerman keeps up by shifting focus from one man to the other in alternating chapters. Each is picking up pieces of the puzzle, and sometimes not sharing what they learn -- so that we may know more than the characters do when they're heading into danger. In one chapter only, Hillerman also lets us see a killer planning to do Chee in. Hillerman discloses appearance, motivation, and the thought process that leads to strategy -- then drops the character until the trap is sprung. While it gets a bit tedious to read in chapter after chapter some variation of the idea, "Hmmm, this 'skinwalker' superstition is doing a lot of damage to our Navajo community," we can't help but feel suspense once we know about the killer. It stops being "whodunnit," and becomes "uh-oh, is this part of the trap?"

A foreword by novelist Sarah Paretsky mentions Hillerman's method. He does not write an outline for the whole book, but only "four or five moves ahead." It seems like a good idea, allowing for spontaneity.

Detective Novel Skinwalker Shifts Focus for Suspense | Fiction

"Fiasco" in Iraq: Plans without Point

( Reflections on Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks, longtime Pentagon correspondent of the Washington Post. News and History )

It's not so much that Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks and team didn't plan for Iraq and its aftermath, because we read about plans galore, days of war games to test consequences, and reports and critiques -- all the things that you'd guess military planners would do.

The main problem, according to Ricks, is the scant thought given to "strategy." How could this be? There are a couple of answers suggested in Ricks.

The first one is that the theorists who pushed for this war long before Mr. Bush did were, in Ricks' formulation, like 60s radicals. To them, what mattered was to put on notice all middle east dictators and nominal democracies that the USA could and would take out an unfriendly middle east dictator. If Saddam's fall brought in another dictator, or a theocracy, fine; if democracy could arise, so much the better; just so long as we break up the status quo in a region that has been a stagnant breeding ground for terrorists. So, strategy, shmategy.

The second one has to do with the personalities of the leaders who pushed for this war and carried through its first year. The planners, including Rumsfeld and Franks and Paul Wolfowitz, are said to be "smart" and "educated" but not "wise." We are led to believe that their planning for "Phase IV" (what would follow Saddam's surrender) was summarized in a power-point slide (supplied by Ricks) that outlines how "divisions of the people" along ethnic, tribal and religious lines will gradually be resolved by the military's "aimed pressure to achieve end state over time" until we reach little eggs labeled "ethnic, tribal, religious" safely ensconced together in one big egg called "strategic success." In between, there are stars listed labeled "mayors' meetings," "Joint meetings," "elections," and, listed first, "stability."

But officers are quoted again and again saying that "tactically" we're winning every battle, but "strategically" we're a mess. Our plans carried assumptions that contradicted what we actually did -- that Saddam's army and Baath officials would be converted to help our efforts within days of his defeat, for example. Yet almost immediately we disbanded the army and shortly afterward "de-Baathified" civil leadership. We bypassed large Saddam-loyal communities in the "Sunni Triangle" en route to Baghdad, where armed forces were waiting for battle, and declared victory when Saddam fell -- leaving dangerous forces all around the city. We assumed civilians' welcome of the US and then did much to ensure their enmity (outlined in chapters called "How to Create an Insurgency." It's Abu Ghraib, of course (a marine is quoted at the moment he sees the story on CNN: "Some a------ just lost the war for us"), but much more.

[Detour, here: Painful as is the section on soldiers' abuse of detainees and indignities inflicted on the people we're supposed to be helping, it wasn't the first time. Cruelty against Philippinos created a public uproar for awhile when we fought an insurgency there following our War with Spain in 1899. Just today, a news article reports on the recent release of classified data showing widespread cruelty, casual murders, and recreational mistreatment of suspects in Vietnam - including baseball bats and electric shocks that were news to us at Abu Gharib in Iraq. But George Washington's orders demanding dignified treatment of prisoners during our Revolution purposefully to differentiate us from our enemies establishes a baseline. Some have laughed at liberals for wringing their hands over prisoners in Gitmo who've been chained into uncomfortable positions - "That's not torture," scoffed an evangelical friend of mine, "and they don't have the rights of American citizens." Well, sure it is, and I believe our whole society is based on certain "self-evident" truths that "all men are created equal," a phrase explicitly made to cover citizens of the world.]

After the new wave of leaders come in, the story changes (Chapter 18). In Ricks' telling, General Casey (Chief in DC), Abizaid (Commander in Iraq), Mattis (Marine units, Fallujah), McMaster (Tall Afar), Petraeus (takes over training Iraqis from private contractors), and ambassador Negroponte all have made us proud. They all have in common a mastery of history and our language, plus an openness to discussion and change of their own views. Casey has a group of officers with PhD's prepare a plan for putting down the insurgency. They call themselves "Doctors without Orders" and produce a paper culling lessons learned from insurgencies of the past century. They start doing the right things and stop doing the wrong things, totally reversing practice in Iraq up to then.

A favorite example: McMaster works with Sunni leaders before his attack on Tall Afar, saying humbly, "When the Americans first came, we were in a dark room, stumbling around, breaking china. But now Iraqi leaders are turning on the lights." Then he adds: the time for resistance is therefore over. "This in fact was a threat, stated as politely as possible," comments Ricks. Then McMaster takes his officers and Iraqi officers out to tour the battlefield where Alexander the Great met the Persian Army, to give his American colleagues more perspective on the ancient pride of their Iraqi colleagues. (p. 422) In Tall Afar, the humvees that were driven pell-mell through streets to avoid attacks -- scaring citizens and looking out of control -- were replaced by 15 m.p.h. drives that gave Americans time to see where they were going, respond to developments, look calm. Instead of one big army base at Tall Afar, the Americans and Iraqis embedded themselves in 29 spread out bases to maximize flexibility and awareness.

But events within Iraq seem to have spiraled out of control. US presence is less an issue now that Sunni - Shiite rivalry and revenge have become, by Abizaid's admission, "civil war."

Almost absent from the book is George W. Bush. The caricature of him as a dumb puppet of Republican neo-conservatives got a big blow when Bob Woodward published Bush at War in 2004. From September 11 on, Bush appears to have been skeptical, determined to act decisively, and demanding of clear information. In this book, he appears to be willing to take time with Iraq, agreeing with Sec. of State Colin Powell that "Iraq isn't going anywhere." It seems in this account that Cheney got way ahead, saying that Weapons of Mass Destruction were known to exist in Iraq, etc. etc. etc. Bush is reported to have been surprised by that. He and Powell are both convinced, and Powell convinces others. Ricks allows us to think that the ones pushing for war (including Judith Miller of the NY Times) filtered the info that Bush saw, and showed him info that just wasn't true -- he was misled, and then he made the tough decisions and helped to sell the policy.

Late in the book, (p. 407) Bush is reportedly shocked to hear that the war isn't going well. This is following his reelection in 2004. He sharply questions the Pentagon briefer, while other Pentagon officials present try to downplay the critique. Bush keeps the information to himself a few more weeks before letting on of a change in public, and then starts to work the more realistic assessments into his speeches.

Ricks lays out scenarios for what could happen, finally. The best one is the Philippines model - we stay for years, but with cooperation and mutual respect and eventual independence. The worst ones look like World War I with Iran and Shiites v. Syrian Sunnis, with Kurds seizing oil fields and getting help from Iran when Turkey attacks them -- and everyone attacks Israel, I guess.

One interesting aside: Besides Ricks' interviews with Pentagon and DoD sources, he had access to the Internet, where he read thousands of pages of postings by soldiers in the field, reporters in the Green Zone, Iraqi civilians... their advice, their complaints, their observations. Has any war historian ever had such a range and multitude of sources available instantaneously?

News & History

"Crazy Busy" and the Gift of Attention Deficit

Response to Crazy Busy by Edward M. Hallowell, MD

"We all have ADD now." I've said that for years, whenever a student or parent was worried about the disorder. Now a specialist in the field confirms it. His recommendation: Learn how ADD can be a gift.

Self-help books that I've read have all spent roughly one third of the book telling stories to convince the readers that they need the book, one third or less with practical answers, and one third more of examples. Hallowell's earlier books Connect and Worry were excellent, even moving examples of the genre.

This one is short on moving examples, but certainly hits with slices of life that anyone reading or writing a blog will identify with, such as some modern maladies he calls "leeches" of our precious time and attention. One is "screen sucking," the addiction to screens that afflicts us, so that we are checking email, news, what's on TV every chance we get. He advises a 12 step program, seriously. Another is "frazzing," the illusion of multitasking, when all you're really doing is three things ineffectively at once for the power rush you get doing it.

The essential image of the book was his own experience as short order cook alone on the late-night shift, how he got into a rhythm - work food on the grill, look back for customers' signals at the counter, look up on the board for orders, repeat. When this was going well, he was in his "C-state" (connected, confident...) and his mind was free to work on other issues. This was effective multitasking. When the orders came in too fast, he went into "F-state" (frazzled, frantic, other f words) and made mistakes. Since we can't avoid some of this multi-tasking, he suggests that we learn to recognize when we're transitioning from C to F.

The cure for "F state" is "play," creative engagement in some off-task task -- a "gift" of truly ADD people like himself. He suggests that work is activity exerted for something that is of value to others, while play is the same thing -- when it is of value to the self. Play is thinking on tangents. He suggests exercises aroundp. 219 for encouraging "play" - such as going out in the car and intentionally getting lost. He swears that our thoughts while we find our way home will end up being creative ways to deal with problems.

It reminds me of my mother's experience. She told me that housecleaning was her problem-solving time: She'd start in one corner of the house with a problem relating to one of us kids; by the time she'd worked her way down stairs to the laundry room, the problem was solved.










Education

Back Words to “Forward” on Hispanic Immigration

E-mail makes it easy for anyone to forward messages to dozens of strangers via friends of friends. About one in every ten is genuinely uplifting and one more is genuinely clever. Others are just sentimental or standard talk-radio generalizations. But two recent messages stand out for ugliness. It took one minute of thought and two minutes on Google to de-bunk it. I’m going to deal with one of them here, now, and save the other for later.


One email began (in HYSTERICAL CAPITAL LETTERS) “IF YOU THINK HISPANICS ARE HERE FOR WORK..... YOU'RE NUTS!!” and cited the LA Times for statistics that are supposed to alarm us. For example, “ 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.” Granted, murder warrants are alarming, but we can relax, because there’s a healthy murder rate among non-Hispanic whites and African Americans, too. My search of the LA Times web archives, which go back to 1985, did not confirm this guy’s 95%, and he lost all credibility.

Besides, he has no historical memory. The author of the email tells us that “21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking,” and goes on to scream “WAKE UP AMERICA!” I suggest a little review of history. We’ve had this kind of hysteria every twenty years since the “Alien and Sedition Act” of the John Adams administration. News media in other national languages have had a large audience in American cities since the mid-1800s and have always been part of the system that eases new generations into the USA. I suppose this is someone who failed high school Spanish and is affronted by people who don’t just speak good ol’ English. I, for one, am excited to hear more than one language when I walk through a public place, and enjoy the ingenuity that it takes for me and, say, a waiter, to communicate.

I thought I’d check out Google for more balanced reporting, and found refutations for the rest of the ugly email in an article by Larry Kudlow, National Review’s Online Economics Editor, host of CNBC’s Kudlow & Company and author of the daily web blog, Kudlow’s Money Politic$. I’m reprinting pieces of his article, with my comments in italics:

Until Mexico’s economic malaise is cured, millions will continue to seek economic opportunity in the United States. Can you blame them?

Once these immigrants get here they work hard. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanic unemployment is only 5.5 percent, compared to 4.8 percent overall.

...As Center for Equal Opportunity chairman Linda Chavez [George W. Bush's first choice for labor secretary] has been pointing out, Hispanics are great entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and job creators. According to 2002 Census Bureau data, Hispanics are opening new businesses at a rate that’s three-times faster than the national average.

People who take risks, endure privation, work hard and long, and keep for themselves little of what they earn to benefit their families – aren’t these the ideal Americans, paragons of “family values?”

Kudlow shoots down some other accusations:

As for the claim that illegal workers don’t pay taxes, Princeton professor Douglas Massey estimates that roughly two-thirds of undocumented immigrants pay the FICA payroll tax. Overall, illegals have fed $7 billion to Social Security and $1.5 billion to Medicare. They are contributing to our wealth, not reducing it.

And what do they take from the system? According to Forbes magazine, only 10 percent of illegal Mexicans have sent a child to an American public school and just 5 percent have received food stamps or unemployment benefits. A U-Cal Davis study also shows that more immigrant workers leads to more economic growth. This is standard economics. Multiply an enlarged workforce times existing productivity and you get more economic growth.

He points out the shameful mismanagement of wealth in the corrupt Mexican government, a sad old story; and he points out the way the USA has opened our borders when it was convenient, and then closed our borders when alarmists like this emailer get the upper hand.

The only way to reduce illegal immigration, therefore, is to raise the unskilled H-2B visa level and bring it in line with job openings in the United States. This is the only feasible economic solution to the chronic problem of illegal immigration. The idea worked forty years ago with the successful Bracero program for farm workers. It can work again.

Today’s low visa limit of only 140,000 has caused illegal flows to skyrocket. This must be changed. Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute estimates that U.S. labor-market conditions can absorb about 400,000 Mexican immigrants per year. This would balance labor supply-and-demand conditions and illegal immigration would plummet.

He concludes:

Proper reform should combine stronger border security with higher visa levels and a path to citizenship. Yes, illegals should pay fines and go to the back of the citizenship line. Yes, employers must aggressively cooperate with the new rules. But compassion must coexist with free-economy principles and the rule of law.

Before he passed away, Pope John Paul II quoted Matthew 25:35: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” That is precisely the spirit America should seek when it comes to immigration reform.

Next time you feel like forwarding ANYTHING in CAPITAL LETTERS that purports to uphold good old American values by ripping into someone else – just delete my name from your list.

Find Kudlow’s essay and more recent articles with other thoughtful opinions at NationalReview.com

News and History

Fiction: Updike's "Terrorist" Plot has Character

Perhaps John Updike's critics would like the master novelist NOT to try to understand how a teenaged Muslim is manipulated into becoming a suicide bomber?

[Aside: In a response on another's blog (edrant.com), I wrote this succinct statement:
Yes, “Updike dared to be sincere about his underlying humanism.” Ahmad is only more intense than the others in the book, but they’re all wrestling one way or another with how our American world makes it tough to believe in God or anything. Even that isn’t a slam on America, just an observation of the way it’s turned out in a country where everyone’s doing a pretty good job of being pretty good.] 

Updike, whose earliest fiction has always focused on a love of life - and fear of losing it - "gets into" the mind of a teenager who could throw life away. Bigots blame Islam, but we've had suicide bombers in the West for over a century (read Henry James's novel about a suicide bomber, Princess Cassamassima, ca. 1895). We have in America numerous examples of terrorist-suicide teens in the last twenty years (Columbine ... Pearl, Mississippi...) Some bloggers derided Updike after he told an interviewer that the first draft focused on a Catholic priest -- and a blogger asked rhetorically, "He thinks a CHRISTIAN would do that?" Well, sure -- we've got examples of preachers and priests gone bad in this country, misguided followers who smuggled weapons, shot government officials, and / or poisoned themselves. So it's not a stretch to say that Updike's terrorist is no alien, and understanding him would be understanding something about ourselves.

Understand what, exactly? Updike's real subject here isn't terrorism, politics, jihad, or Islam: it's feeling the absence of God. A line from the Koran (Qu'ran) about God's being closer to a believer "than the vein in his neck" keeps recurring, as the young jihadist, who has no father or siblings -- thinks of God as a kind of brother whose presence he feels intensely. But much else of what the boy sees, feels, and learns makes him question that presence -- in a public high school, in a convenience store, in Islamic study with a cynical teacher, in the truck that he delivers furniture in, not to mention on public media and advertisements.

The teen Ahmad is the focus, but all the other characters are dealing with the same feelings, and their faith (or lost faith) is equally challenged. These include Ahmad's 60-something atheist Jewish "college counselor," the boy's lapsed Catholic Irish mom, the advisor's voracious and fat wife, her work-obsessed sister, and the sister's boss -- Secretary of Homeland Security.

At the moment of the story when Ahmad becomes aware that he is involved with a terrorist cell, he remembers the old school's motto, "Knowledge is freedom," and thinks, "Knowledge can also be a prison, with no way out once you're in." A couple of pages later, his mother is discussing Ahmad with Jack, the counselor, who suggests the same thing from another angle:

"There's a certain hunger for, I don't know, the absolute, when everything is so relative, and all the economic forces are pushing instant gratification and credit-card debt at [kids today]. ...People want to go back to simple -- black and white, right and wrong, when things aren't simple."
"So my son is simple-minded."
"In a way. But so is most of mankind. Otherwise, being human is too tough. Unlike the other animals, we know too much. They, the other animals, know just enough to get the job done and die."

A few pages later, Ahmad admits that he fears how education might weaken his faith.

I won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say, it's both a surprise and perfectly fitting, leading to a final sentence that feels exactly right.

08/01/2006 | Fiction, Religion

Original Intent: A Good Place to Start. but. . .

(Thoughts occasioned by an essay in The Claremont Review of Books (Summer 2006), "The Supreme Court v. the Constitution of the United States of America" by Michael M. Uhlmann, and the book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford Press, 2006). News and History | Religion )

So much of our political and religious strife comes down to one question about founders (of the USA, of Christianity): Do ancient texts have inherent authority that trumps any new developments in our understanding of the way we should live? My answer, in a word: No. Yet I believe above all in what conservatives call "rule of law" -- by which I mean, we go by procedures and guidelines created when calm people thought through a problem and came up with a solution. Much better that than the alternative, which would be rule by whim, rule by mass hysteria, rule by knee-jerk response. . .

The question has hit the blood-boiling point in two realms I think about often, in the Episcopal Church and in Constitutional law. The Claremont Review and other conservative groups -- and I! -- are worked up over the Supreme Court's recent interpretation that extends a municipality's "eminent domain" over property that could conceivably be a greater source of revenue in government hands. Then, in the Episcopal church, the appointment of a gay bishop a couple years ago and the more recent appointment of a woman to lead the House of Bishops has some parishioners in a tizzy.

Let's begin a discussion of "authority" with the historical observation that humankind made a great step forward when we learned to take original texts with a healthy dose of skepticism. That's what differentiated the Middle Ages from what followed, the notion that experience might be right when ancient texts (and, for that matter, present authorities in the church and state) were wrong. Petrarca, "father of the Renaissance," published a letter addressed to Cicero pointing out the ancient orator's errors and personal flaws that had been revealed in some recently-unearthed documents; Galileo used the telescope to demonstrate to those with an open mind that Copernicus had been right about the planets, despite what Scripture and ancient philosophers wrote. Martin Luther started the Reformation when he refused to accept the Roman Church's authority to tell him how to read what was plain in the text -- opening a can of Worms, one could say. The founders of the USA got their ideas and language from John Locke and others born in the English Renaissance who had to come up with a theory to justify decapitating King Charles I and later de-throning King James II, both of whom supposedly had Divine authority to rule.. . and they did it partly by giving new authority to something called Magna Carta they found in some trunk somewhere and by reading into it ideas about the common people that would never have occurred to the original authors, who were all self-interested aristocrats.

Let's say for argument that the founders were inherently authoritative, then we have the problem that they disagreed with each other. We have the Constitutional debate as proof, and disagreements among the heavy-hitters in The Federalist Papers, continued during Hamilton and Madison's days in early administrations, with fierce disagreement over the authority of the Constitution itself to bind states. A Civil War quelled the discussion, but it's still hotly contested in the limited realms of states' rights to limit abortion, for example. In Scripture, we see Paul v. Peter on Jewish law, Paul v. James on primacy of faith, and even Paul v. Paul on whether women should be leaders or just silent observers in worship. Does one person's inherent authority negate the others? Don't we still have to pick and choose?


Besides these, we possess dozens of writings -- gospels, letters, collections of sayings, apocalypses to rival Revelation -- that were once considered authoritative by at least some churches. By what authority did Church councils arrive at which ones of these to accept, and which to reject, five hundred years AD? Since those councils, other councils have picked and chosen some writings over others. During a parish meeting at St. James (Marietta, GA), one parishioner stood to accuse the bishops of betraying the faith by appointing the gay bishop: "you can't pick and choose which Scripture to follow." I was seated near the Rector, and we met eyes and whispered at the same time, "We've been doing that for two thousand years."

We also pick and choose which texts to read literally. Jesus and Paul state clearly more than once that the Kingdom of God would rise up within the life spans of their contemporaries. To insist that they did not err, one has to make allowances for either limits in their knowledge (i.e., Paul changed his mind), or some kind of rhetorical reason for exaggerration, or else they have to look at the loosely related congregations scattered throughout the Roman Empire and the persecutions of believers and call that "The Kingdom of God." Churches have long been embarrassed by the inclusion of The Song of Solomon in Scripture and have decided to read it as a ridiculously explicit allegory of Christ's love for his Church. In the Book of Job, "comforters" who spout the same ideas found in the Book of Proverbs come off looking like fools.

Lincoln was no originalist: he appealed to the Declaration and the Constitution, but he knew that others among the founders did not read these documents the way he was doing. Obviously, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt all read the words "All men are created equal" differently. Paul was no originalist: He interpreted literal stories as allegories whenever it helped in an argument, as he does in his discussion of "children of Abraham by faith" in Romans. Martin Luther wasn't an originalist: he advocated ripping James out of the Bible.

But picking and choosing makes originalists afraid. Most of all, they fear the "slippery slope," that we can't question part of the sacred text without questioning the other parts, and then, how will we stop a precipitous slide into the mud where nothing's sacred? And how do they know what to really believe?

"Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy that wouldn't earn points in a middle school debate. It makes no sense to say that A is okay but we must treat it as wrong because it might lead to D. Sorry, if A isn't wrong in itself, it's not wrong. Neither, for that matter, are B and C.

Originalists can relax. The authority of any text doesn't come from its being original or being somehow dictated by God. It comes from whether it feels right -- not to one person, not on a whim, but in a consensus of informed community, when experience, tradition, reason, and time have been used to make the decision. So, for example, the fourth-century council of Hippo didn't include in their Bible the ancient texts telling how boy Jesus struck an annoying neighbor dead and drowned his grammar teacher with a wave of his hand. That's not the Jesus that the Church was worshiping four hundred years before they'd had a Bible, so it didn't get into the Bible. In United States history, South Carolina claimed the right to nullify laws of the Federal Congress, and Andrew Jackson argued back -- with the threat of force. Eventually, force followed by reason prevailed.

On the plus side, there are other pieces of literature that do have this feeling of authoritativeness to them. My Bible would include St. Augustine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and C. S. Lewis, plus Shakespeare's KING LEAR, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and the complete stories of Flannery O'Connor. (An actor who is also an evangelist on the London theatre scene, speaking to a group of evangelicals here in Atlanta last year, cited Samuel Beckett as his favorite modern playwright: an atheist who wrote truth that a Christian can feel to be right).

As the Declaration of Independence wisely puts it, when a people decides to pick and choose which parts of an ancient authority to jettison, it should not be done "lightly," and reasons should be declared.

Let our disagreements over who can be a bishop or what "eminent domain" or "cruel and unusual" mean be decided the old - fashioned way: hash it out on the merits, taking into account what our predecessors thought, and what may have changed since then; let's follow procedures mapped out for making new rules, or for changing old procedures; and let's not let someone from centuries ago have the final word by default.

Original Intent: A Good Place to Start, but . . . | News & History, Religion

Don't Study Jane Austen's Work

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen


Don't study Jane Austen's work: enjoy it!

I read Jane Austen reluctantly, to fill a gap in my education. The very first line told me, "This lady is fun to be with." She writes, "Any single man with 10,000 a year must be in need of a wife."

When all is said and done, the plot is basically, girls meet boys, girls lose boys, girls get boys. Two elder sisters are curious about two rich bachelors in chapter one, and are married to both by the end. The obstacles to both marriages are mostly social class. The girls' family the Bennets are afflicted by an eccentric father -- jovial, but distant as he can be from the mistress of the household, a histrionic and blatant missus. There's a serious old-maid-in-the-making named Mary who spends a lot of time in her room drawing moral pictures. Then there are two 18th century Valley Girls, Lydia and Kitty, frivolous and man-crazy.

Austen's method for developing her story is almost like the music of her day -- when "classical" was modern. That is, she introduces, repeats, and manipulates contrasting themes. The younger sisters contrast the serious Mary; Mrs. contrasts Mr., and the pair of them contrast the intelligent, gracious, modest Uncle and Aunt Gardiner. Mr. Bingley contrasts in his amiability to his friend Darcy in his aloofness. And, at center, Elizabeth's spirited wit and acumen contrast to her older sister Jane's quiet modesty and determined good opinion of everyone.

Occasionally I got impatient --Ok, already: Elizabeth loves Darcy, Darcy loves Elizabeth; they misread each other and were misled by pride and prejudice -- bring this charade to an end!-- I enjoyed it page by page and was satisfied overall as by a classical symphony. I felt a rush of goodwill when Elizabeth and Darcy in one of their walks finally confess their feelings.

All along, I had extra enjoyment from getting into life of the time: the rhythm of visits and meals and letters; how a three-mile visit is a major undertaking; how a cold becomes a two-week convalescence three miles from home; how everyone' income (all inherited, it seems) is everyone's knowledge and might as well be advertised; how conversation is frankly a kind of competition involving everyone as players and judges.

Also enjoyed extremely boring Reverend Collins, hate his worshiped "Lady Catherine de Bourgh," and marvel at how young teenaged girls of today are so much like Lydia and Kitty.

-from notes I wrote before blogs existed in February, 1996


[The late P.D. James set a murder mystery among Austen's characters.  Read my comments about Death Comes to Pemberley. ]

Music: 30 Second Composer on John Adams

I stumbled across a blog called Mixed Meters with a fascinating premise. Its author, David Ocker, trained as a composer, found himself angry at his inability to get his compositions heard, despite some success getting pieces published. When he began to hate music itself, he quit for ten years.

Then the internet and a lap top computer made a difference. Sitting in his local Starbuck's, he composes music every week. He sets a couple of rules for himself: Each piece is thirty seconds long, and its title must be something he observed at Starbucks.

Now hundreds of people (well, maybe it's dozens) have downloaded his pieces. I left a comment at his blog, and he replied,

It boggles my mind how much fun 'm having writing music these days ... - I'm not worried about quality and I sort of enjoy trying to provoke or confuse the listeners. Each piece I post seems to get listened to about 2 or 3 dozen times - but no one ever says anything to me about them - people must be too confused.

What drew me to the blog was a connection to composer John Adams, to whom Ocker has a personal connection. Here's some of what he writes about Adams and NIXON IN CHINA:

Hey, I was in Houston at the premier of Nixon too. I've never quite come to terms with the third act - but that may be because the first two acts are simply wonderful - and Alice's libretto has always seemed deep and filled with unlimited allusions. I often find myself quoting lines.

Remember, as John's copyist, I spend a lot of time dissecting the librettos in strange ways - mostly syllable by syllable - but even now I'm impressed by the words in Nixon - one of my long delayed projects is the computerized full orchestra score to Nixon - so all the scores and parts are sitting on a shelf a few feet from my head. But I'm really working on A Flowering Tree - the opera premiering this fall...

I like the music to Nixon too. It would have been nice if more of the simple harmonies alternating rhythmically had survived into his current dramatic works. Not as a stylistic mainstay but as a foil to the newer ideas.

Music: 30 Second Composer on John Adams | Music

Music: Jazz Pianist Eldar with Trio in Concert

">Eldar, a teen pianist, performed at Atlanta's Spivey Hall last night.

Eldar was wonderful. His hands were a blur on the showy stuff, but the highlights for me were two ballads: "'Round Midnight" played with a light touch, and a sweet take on "You Don't Know What Love Is." I enjoyed as well a couple of original pieces that would build to a nearly-chaotic trio free-for-all and suddenly drop to sprinkling of notes in unison -- when the drummer Todd Strait softly accented each piano note with a different sound made with brushes and cymbals, as if the bell-like sounds were built into the piano. The encore was a solo so virtuosic that everyone laughed: Eldar hid all the familiar riffs from "Take the A Train" like bright graffitti in a shimmering wall of notes.

Originally from Kyrgyztan, he seemed thoroughly Americanized. In blue jeans and casual shirt, he made me feel overdressed. But when he bowed, he had one hand on his heart, European-style.

Music: Jazz Pianist Eldar with Trio in Concert | Music

Composer John Adams: Musical Landscapes

Music. Reflections on works by John Adams, occasioned by The John Adams Reader edited by Thomas May.

In a fine interview printed in The John Adams Reader, the composer describes his own music as driving (or flying) across a landscape: Once you start your motion forward, large objects pass by on the left and right, while others in the distance come into view, small at first, then large -- and others recede. Under all, there's the sound of the machine in motion. What a great way to think of a piece of music, an alternative to the sonata form that Haydn developed -- sort of the five - paragraph - essay of the music world -- followed or at least referenced by composers ever since.

Now thirty years into composing such pieces, John Adams' machine keeps working for me. Yes, there's a sameness to his work, and, yes, when he does something different, adding in some of very harsh sounds and awkward jagged edges, I don't like it as much as the more mellifluous and spacier 80s stuff.

On the other hand, a John Adams piece sounds like it's his, and Mozart's sounds like Mozart's, too, so that's not a bad thing in itself.

And, still on the other hand, many pieces of Adams soar, delight, and touch the heart, from the 70s "Shaker Loops" to the 80s vocal piece "The Wound - Dresser" (setting Walt Whitman's verse account of nursing Civil War soldiers) to the
millennial "Century Rolls" which I heard played by the Atlanta Symphony with the pianist for whom Adams wrote it, Emanuel Ax.

Finally, I'll go out on a limb and say that the opera NIXON IN CHINA has become one of my favorite works of art in any medium. Here, I have special authority, because I was at the premiere.

In 1987, I drove the ten hours to Houston to see the opera's world premiere. I admit that I got totally lost in the long bombastic scene with Nixon, Mao, Chou, Kissinger, and Mao's secretaries; that I was baffled (and bored) by the "ballet" in Act Two, and I had trouble staying awake in Act Three -- which shows us all the principals preparing to sleep after the final day of the summit, with six plain roll-a-beds, as if they're retiring to their cabin at summer camp.

As I walked among national TV crews and even literally ran into the entourage of the "kid wonder" director Peter Sellars, his orange hair standing straight up four inches -- I was thinking that the music was never less than pleasant, but I wasn't all that excited. I also couldn't decide what I thought about several places where the orchestra was reaching for big, ominous climaxes while the stage action was extremely banal, as when we watch Pat Nixon put on her hat and gloves for a day of touring. That seemed like bad staging to me.

Through recording and a video of that same performance, I grew to appreciate even those parts that baffled or bored me at the time. If I was baffled by Mao and his strident secretaries, well, so are Nixon and Kissinger. (Mao makes an oblique pronouncement and relaxes, leaving Nixon -- the dogged student and striver all his life -- to interpret it as a statement of policy; Chou En Lai reassures Nixon: "It was a riddle, not a test.") If Madame Mao's propaganda ballet seemed to dissolve into chaos as Pat and Dick rush on stage to help the heroine with a glass of water -- well, I've learned to see this as an amusing theatrical trick that embodies the difference between Mao's hard doctrines about classes and systems and empathetic Americans' visceral response to personal stories.

Chou En Lai's toast (sung originally with a silvery yet warm tone by remarkable baritone Sanford Sylvan), is one of Adams' slow rides across a vast landscape, with text that mirrors his method exactly: "We have begun to celebrate the different roads that led us to this mountain pass, this 'summit' where we stand. Look down, and see what we have undergone. Future and past lie far below, half visible..." This aria succeeds like nothing else I know, sweeping us up in pulsing and colorful accompaniment, long lines of melody, and gradual build up to a vision of "paths we have not taken yet" where "innumerable grains of wheat salute the sky," and a toast to a time when our children's children will look back on this moment. I get chills thinking about it even now.

That soporific third act has become the one I think about most, especially two moments near the end: All wound up and unable to sleep after the summmit, Nixon reminisces about camaraderie during the War and the Nixons' early struggles ("those damn slipcovers" Pat comments), talking at Pat but never acknowledging her as she hovers behind him, sometimes touching him. She finally gives up and sits alone on her bed. Just then, Nixon gives her a little kiss on the forehead and says, lamely, "This is my way of saying thanks." A bit later, Chou En Lai remains awake while the others seem to have finally fallen asleep, and a solo violin suggests bird call and sun rise, and Chou sings of age, weariness, futility, and beauty of the world -- and the last words of the opera are his. Having not slept, he is resigned: "To work."

From Thomas May's book, I see that the collaborators did not work well together, and the librettist Alice Goodman was most miffed. But I give her a lot of the credit for what's right in this show. She tried, she said, to represent each character "as
eloquently as possible" in the way that the character would want to be portrayed.

As a writer and composer myself, I'm inspired by these two ideas: Let the characters speak eloquently for themselves; give the music movement and shape like the landscapes we drive past.

Composer John Adams: Musical Landscapes | Category: Music

Updike's Terrorist: They just don't get it

(Reflections early in reading John Updike's Terrorist, with related thoughts about Graham Greene and W. H. Auden) Haven't had to read far to give the lie to both professional critics such as Maureen Corrigan and to bloggers who all make the usual mistake of attributing the thoughts of a troubled or troubling character to the author. Shakespeare wrote both Edmund and Edgar in LEAR, and Regan and Cordelia, too. So Updike writes a conflicted teenaged boy both drawn to the warmth and good intentions of the "infidels" around him and also drawn to hatred of our culture, and feeling self-hatred, too. That doesn't make Updike the one who hates the US. As usual, Updike has done his research. The boy's own reading of the Koran brings him conflicting passages of mercy and hatred. The fanatically earnest young man draws the interest of an unbelieving Jewish man near retirement; both are disgusted with their world, and with themselves. Both are uncomfortably aware of healthier people around them. When Updike said in some interview that he was trying to "love" the terrorist, he's reflecting the same kind of thought that we get in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter in which protagonist Scobie believes that, "if you get to the heart of the matter," every sin can be understood, if not forgiven - and that's how God must view us. Along the way in Terrorist, we get into the minds of the Secretary for Homeland Security, an earnest man doing the best he knows how in a job that he knows is impossible to do successfully; we meet the boy's mother, and we read telling remarks from a high school choir girl who tries to connect to the terrorist-to-be, who says that the spirit "says 'no' to the physical world" : "The way I feel it, the spirit is what comes out of the body, like flowers come out of the earth. Hating your body is like hating yourself...." Is it coincidence that I was just reading the final chapter of a book on W. H. Auden's faith in his poetry, where the author focuses on Auden's ambivalence towards his own body, which sometimes seemed to him like a broken-down car in which his spirit was unhappily riding? Not a coincidence: it's central to being a thoughtful human.

Updike's Terrorist: They just don't get it | Category: Fiction, Poetry, News & History, Drama

Superman Returns : Myth or Merchandise?

Before we get to the first frame of the movie Superman Returns, we sit through an inordinate number of grandly animated corporate logos for all who own a stake in the Superman franchise. It embarrassed me to see myself as a consumer of this seventy-year -old product yet again. Surely "Superman" is fast food for the emotions, with predictable thrills and predictable smiles, and with a guaranteed warm feeling generated by nostalgia? By the end of the movie, I was thinking otherwise: that these characters exist now independent of whoever tells their story. We all own them, and want to see moviemakers treat them with respect.

This movie satisfies expectations, and also stretches them. By now, "Superman" represents America at least as much as "Uncle Sam" does, making him a mirror of our nation. What do we see? Power, of course, and problem-solving. Also vulnerability, and willingness to turn back around and rush back into danger for others' sake. Once in the movie, through a montage-like survey of international TV screens, we hear commentators in German and French telling how Superman came to the rescue in their countries. The screenwriters have peppered the script with references to other myths: a "god in blue tights," Prometheus, and in a visual pun, Atlas -- all good images of technological giant USA with the world on its shoulders. Bringing back an element from the 1976 movie, there's also a good bit of talk about father, son, and savior.

There's more here, though, a post-9/11 iconography that also lifted last year's Spider-man movie: More than once, we see firemen, policemen, doctors, and they're not the helpless props of earlier movies. One pair of policemen, clearly fearful for their lives nonetheless step into the line of fire to stop a killer. In another scene, the emergency personnel are rescuing the Man of Steel himself. (The Spider-man movie's best scene was one in which the hero exhausts himself rescuing an out-of-control commuter train, and the people on board band together to defend him from the super villain.)

Now, some reviewers have said that all this is leaden and no fun. The fun stuff is there, too, along with good old-fashioned emotional movie making. All the old catch phrases are in there, including "it's a bird, it's a plane. . ." A vivid sequence early on shows adolescent Clark Kent joyously leaping dozens of yards at a time through a cornfield and in a great moment, discovering that he can fly.

The main thread of the movie isn't really the villain's plot, but the question about romance: Will Lois Lane take Superman back? He's been gone five years, and she's got a boy friend and a son, and she's "moved on." To make this difficult, the boy friend is likable, devoted to her and the son, and something of an action hero himself. One of the director/screenwriters' best touches in the movie is a pair of scenes. In one, Superman comes to the rescue of Lois's little family, and his romantic rival depends on him. But minutes later, the boyfriend risks everything to save Superman.

I checked reviews at Rotten Tomatoes where 75% of a hundred-plus reviews were running positive. The performers are appealing and natural. The effects don't look like effects, as on many occasions we see Superman just enjoying flight, passing out of the camera's range, blending in with a twilight shot of the skyline, as if it were no big deal, and that makes it all the more magical. Better yet, the special effects make sense -- when Superman must somehow land a plane that's spinning out of control, you can think through the problem with him, and when he has to go to plan "B," you're right there with him -- and then the director still manages to surprise and delight with one of those hair-breadth deliveries. In another sequence, in one of those situations we've grown used to seeing in dozens of movies, there's a whole city falling apart, a chaos of breaking glass, falling debris, a workman thrown through the air, gas mains blowing up all at the same time. Again, we get to watch Superman respond to these in a kind of triage-operation, and (evidently) not one person perishes.

The negative reviews all seem to remember the 1976 movie as wonderful. They forget how the first one clumsily interrupted a five-act Greek tragedy by Godfather novelist Mario Puzo with a jokey script by a couple of guys who wrote the musical comedy "It's Superman." In that movie, Christopher Reeve was funny and believable as Clark Kent, but just a pawn of the special effects guys in his blue tights -- not his fault, but the director's.

The bad guy is Lex Luthor again, who was played by Gene Hackman as a stand-up comedian in the 70s series -- all ego and casual cruelty. Kevin Spacey has all that going for him, but a much stronger presence, and something better: Thanks to good acting and good close-ups, we often see his eyes as he's watching events unfold. We see curiosity, dawning ideas, surprise, and vitality.

This version has it all over the 70s one, and retains the best thing about it, John Williams' themes.

Superman Returns : Myth or Merchandise? | Category: Religion, News & History, Drama

The March by E.L.Doctorow: Out Like a Lamb

The end of E. L. Doctorow's novel The March couldn't be much of a surprise: peace. Except for a surprisingly strong attack by CSA's Joe Johnston at Bentonville NC, Sherman's progress through South and North Carolina was inexorable and would terminate at the same time as Lee surrendered to Grant in Virginia, followed within a couple weeks by the assassination of Lincoln. Doctorow must bring some kind of closure to all the strands of his story at the same time. Some characters end with hope for a future. My personal favorite character Arly, the rebel soldier who never met a situation that he couldn't reinterpret as God's blessing -- thanks to his own wit, audacity, imagination -- could have been a novel all to himself. His denoument is particularly satisfying, if bitter.

Much of the last section dwells on the meaning of it all. The army seems to dissolve in chaos when its purpose is close to completion, and Sherman himself descends into self-doubt and maybe self-loathing as his mission is accomplished.

Another character introduced late becomes something of an emblem for others. It's a soldier who survives an explosion almost intact, with a foot-long iron spike cleanly thrust into his brain. He doesn't feel it or mind it at first; the doctor Wrede Sartorius guesses rightly that any attempt to remove the spike will kill him, and meanwhile, the man will reveal much about the brain. The soldier's name is "Albion," a fitting name because he's soon a "blank" page (blank, alb, both meaning "white") with no memory besides a childhood song. In alarm, when he can't remember even the start of the sentence he's saying, he chants, "It's always now! It's always now!"

By the end of the book, with the forward momentum of the march ended, and the past wiped away by the war's destruction, that's what everyone is feeling: It's now. Now what?

A humane, wide-reaching, constantly interesting novel.

The March by E.L.Doctorow: Out Like a Lamb | Category: Fiction, News & History

Leadership as Romance: Lincoln's Team of Rivals

From a review I wrote of Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincolnby Doris Kearns Goodwin. News and History )

"Well, aside from that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

I'm reminded of that old joke, because, aside from the senselessness of his assassination and the tragedy of the Civil War itself, Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 biography of Lincoln is really the "feel-good" book of the year.

Biographer Goodwin found a new angle for exploring the familiar territory, opening her lens wide to include Lincoln's cabinet. Suddenly, it's like one of those romantic comedies, where the girl hates the boy at first sight, but he gradually wins her over. Lincoln's that boy, and, as we reach the last chapter, he has won the affection, deep loyalty, or at least the grudging respect of his rivals, opponents, critics, and even of his enemies in the heart of the Confederacy.

Typical of those romantic comedies, there are laughs along the way, as he uses his wiles, humor, and charm to defuse explosions of anger and resentment. There are also tough times, as the war drags on years past its projected end, and newspapers attack Lincoln and his men.

An Illinois boy myself, I've always thought of Lincoln as "my" President. But he won praise even from his enemies. The Charleston Mercury newspaper praised him for gathering about him "the ablest and most earnest men of his country. Where he has lacked in individual ability, learning, experience, or statesmanship, he has collected around him in every department." While cursing him for his actions, the paper grudgingly admits "respect" for him as a ruler, in "appalling" contrast to the Confederate President.

Lincoln's Biography: Sequel in the Works?
As I read, I had an idea for Goodwin's next book. Wouldn't there be a market for a book about leadership and management techniques from Lincoln's examples? The main points might be these: (For examples and quotations, go to the full version of this review at my website.)

• Forgive and forget
  
• A correlary: Replace anguish over unchangeable past with hope in the uncharted future (Goodwin, 521)
  
• Take responsibility for your subordinates' mistakes.
  
• Find the dark lining in a silver cloud, as well as the reverse.
  
• Leaders must educate their followers before asking them to swallow change.
  
• Visit the troops: it's good for them, it's good for the leader.
  
• There's a difference between firmness and obstinance.
  
• Relax with friends and read poetry.
  

Lincoln, Bush, and Newspapers
Aside from these thoughts about leadership, I also saw parallels to President Bush's engagement in Iraq. These are parallels that show how some things never change, regardless of the qualities of leadership in the White House. They incline me to give Bush benefit of more doubt. Here's what I saw:

• Secretary of War Stanton is despised by his critics in much the same way as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld: "brusque, domineering, and unbearable unpleasant to work with."
  
• To the consternation of critics, the President overrides constitutional protections (503), arguing that his own war powers are justified by the constitution (463).
  
• Likewise, Lincoln defends suspension of habeas corpus (523).
  
• The issue of "unitary executive authority" resting in the President alone and not in his cabinet cropped up in a cabinet brouhaha for Lincoln (491) and more recently in the confirmation hearings for Judge Alito.
  
• After initial enthusiasm, the public and their newspapers are calling for negotiated peace two years into conflict (486).
  
• Just as Vice President Cheney is seen to be the forceful genius behind a mediocre President, Secretary of State Seward was widely believed to be the real President.
  
• Opponents of President Lincoln charged (with justification) that his original objectives for the war had changed. Just like Democrats who voted to give Bush authority to launch attack on Iraq, the "Copperheads" in Congress said that their support of the war had changed because Lincoln had changed the goals (503).
  
• Peace demonstrations disturb Washington (522).

Surprise Ending
The book is long and remarkably fun to read. That's the "romance" at its core. Of course, the ending is a tear-jerker. Knowing all the details, I was still choking up reading it, because by the last chapter, I knew the supporting players as well as the star and the villain.

Leadership as Romance: Lincoln's Team of Rivals | Category: News & History

Updike Screed or Updike's Creed?

John Updike's latest novel Terrorist is already a bestseller despite terrible reviews. I heard one of those reviewers on NPR, Maureen Corrigan, who likes just about everything. But she said this one disappointed her high expectations, because the young terrorist whose mind Updike tries to enter is only a mouthpiece for Updike's "screed" against modern US culture. She added that his anger boiled down to the observation that a landscape of McDonald's, WalMart, and StarBucks doesn't have much gravitas, and that we didn't need a great writer like Updike to know that. Her tag line: "It's an old man's book."

I haven't read the book, waiting to begin it until I've finished The March, but I doubt that she's on target, here. Updike has always, always looked between the cracks in our popular culture. In his early books, that meant diners, gymnasiums, cars, Doris Day, movie theatres. His 1977-ish novel The Coup, written from the point of view of a Moslem African dictator educated in Michigan, already played with a Moslem fundamentalist's mixed fascination and revulsion with our sex symbols and instant gratification.

I imagine Updike is doing what he has always done, walking in someone else's shoes awhile, portraying them fairly. If there's anger in Terrorist, it's that of the young Moslem man, not of the old man who wrote it.

I ran across an interesting blog at LitKicks (where they don't believe you relax with a good book - only with mediocre ones -- because good ones make you too joyful or too angry) in which the contributor reports on seeing Updike on stage in New York a couple of days ago. Here's some of what this observer says about Updike:

Updike has a mild manner and a great smile, a smile so big that at times there seem to be three people on stage: Jeffrey Goldberg [the interviewer], John Updike and John Updike's smile. He speaks with quiet confidence and little vanity, allowing Goldberg to throw one controversial question at him after another. Goldberg points out that John Updike had been one of the few literary figures of the 1960's to express support for the Vietnam War, and asks him to talk about George Bush and the war in Iraq. Updike accepts the comparison and acknowledges that, as in the 1960's, his current feelings are mixed: the war is going badly, but the Bush administration faced hard choices and deserves some sympathy for the frustrating position it's in.

Updike is clearly a principled moderate, and it's brave of him to insist on ignoring the popular delineations between red-state and blue-state dogmatism (his new book's sympathetic portrayal of a young terrorist seems designed to anger the right wing, while his refusal to loudly condemn the American war in Iraq will equally alienate the left). At Goldberg's prompting, Updike talks about the strong role of religious faith in his own life (he has always gone to church and believes this has helped him at various times in his life). He exudes a healthy open-mindedness towards all ways of life, and insists on avoiding abstractions and prejudices. "There are no sub-humans in the human race", John Updike says, and this is probably the one thing he says that most people in the crowd agree with.

Very Episcopalian, I'd add. I first read Updike because I ran across an essay in which he mentioned going to the Episcopal Church, not so much because he accepted everything in its creed, but because he's touched by the fact of a group of strangers getting together every week in this sanctuary, making a statement by their participation in this ritual that the rest of life matters. Literature itself makes the same statement, he says.

Read more about his under-appreciated novel Seek My Face at the "reading" part of my web site. Look under "links" in the sidebar of this page.

Updike Screed or Updike's Creed? | Category: Fiction, Religion, News & History

Duke Ellington Tells What Makes Creative People Happy

(Responding to Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn by David Hajdu, and a CD, Such Sweet Thunder, a jazz suite suggested by Shakespeare, composed by Strayhorn and Duke Ellington for the Ellington orchestra)

I once tried to read Duke Ellington's memoir Music is My Mistress and really couldn't make much sense of it. He was an incoherent and idiosyncratic writer. But in his eulogy for his longtime friend and collaborator Billy Strayhorn, Ellington says in one line something I've been trying to say for years: "Billy Strayhorn successfully married melody, words, and harmony, equating the fitting with happiness" [emphasis added].

As this biography makes abundantly clear, Strayhorn was not made happy by the successes of his hit songs and arrangements, nor by the acclaim that came to him when Ellington belatedly made a concerted effort to bring Strayhorn out of the Duke's shadow, nor by several "relationships," nor by the several martinis that Strayhorn imbibed before and after dinner each day. The one thing that energized him was the prospect of creating something new in which everything fit.

Case in point was the commission to produce a musical suite for a Shakespeare celebration. Strayhorn knew his music, knew his Shakespeare, and knew the talents of Ellington's band. He found satisfaction in creating (with Ellington) music (Such Sweet Thunder) that accomplished many things at once, fitting the form of the sonnet, suggesting characters by musical analogies, and making arrangements tailored to the talents of soloists in Ellington's band.

It's like the satisfaction I imagine one feels playing chess on a five-tiered board, moving the piece into exactly the place that achieves "check" in three dimensions. It "fits," or it "clicks." That happens in song, and it happens in theatre (see my review of Bus Stop in May 2006), but it's most miraculous in musical theatre where story, character, melody, harmony, rhyme, an overall theme, stage movement, and the visual design of the show can all fall into alignment. That's why many people find themselves weeping at the end of act one of Sondheim's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE: it's just so perfect.

Duke Ellington Tells What Makes Creative People Happy | Category: Music, Drama